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BUILDING STUDY Architect’s brief Stormen is a landmark project to create a STORMEN CONCERT new cultural quarter for the city of Bodø, , comprising two buildings by DRDH HALL AND LIBRARY, Architects: a 6,300m² library and an 11,200m² three-auditorium concert hall. BODØ, NORWAY DRDH was awarded the design of the project in 2009 through an invited DRDH ARCHITECTS international competition. The invitation to compete followed a previous open competition win for the masterplan of the city’s Cultural Quarter in 2008. Both buildings respond to the particularities of their context between city and landscape, while maintaining a familial relationship that creates an urban ensemble. Externally, both facades display a trabeated construction of precast concrete with an aggregate of local white stone. Forms rhyme between them. Roofs and towers speak to one another and the library establishes a horizon, across which the concert hall surveys the dramatic landscape of sea and mountains. DRDH Architects has been responsible for the complete architectural design of the two buildings and cost quantifi cation and analysis, and worked with Arup London on acoustic and theatre design. Throughout the detailed design stages, the project has been co-ordinated through extensive use of building information modelling (BIM). Procured through a form of construction management, the contracts have been tendered on full production information produced in London. DRDH Architects has also delivered the furniture, fi xings and equipment across both buildings and developed the wayfi nding and signage strategy together with -based design practice Neue. DRDH Architects

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Start on site December 2012 Completion November 2014 Gross internal fl oor area 17,500m² Procurement Invited competition Construction cost NOK1.18 billion (£10.3 million) Construction cost/m² NOK674,286 (£58,723) Architect DRDH Architects Client (library) Bodø Kommune; Library Services University of Client (concert hall) Bodø Kulturhus; Nordland Symphony Orchestra; Nordnorsk Opera; Bodø Sinfonietta; Sinus Rythmic Centre Music Venue Structural/M&E/fi re/lighting Norconsult/Arup Regulation/landscapes Dark Arkitekter, Oslo Acoustic consultant Arup Acoustics/Brekke Strand Theatre consultant Arup Venue Facade engineer Ramboll Facades Cost consultant Bygganalyse, Oslo Site management Byggteam/Sweco Norge/Ramboll Project manager Rambøll Norge, Contractor Gunvald Johansen, Bodø THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL 09.01.15 30 Buildings · Building Study: Stormen Concert Hall and Library, Bodø, Norway, DRDH Architects 31

APPRAISAL By Rory Olcayto Photography by David Grandorge

here are two very old rocks in Stormen, T DRDH Architects’ two buildings for the Norwegian city of Bodø. Artist AK Dolmen has placed them there: one, a 19-stone lichen-covered boulder in the lobby outside a small music venue in the basement of the concert hall; the other, a five-tonne glacial grit-stone in the rooftop courtyard of the library. They are part of Dolmen’s broader art project for the landmark buildings, which encompasses landscape paintings, a talking lamppost and an enlarged photograph of native Sami people. These works draw upon local history and culture, so it’s tempting to think of the boulders as the artist’s way of connecting Stormen with the spectacular mountains that surround the city, but which are largely obscured from view by Bodø’s introverted townscape. Yet DRDH’s cubist ensemble, monumental and integrative like a mountain, embodies this idea (and many others too) unadorned. Like the people of Bodø, Stormen is hospitable and talkative: to the hidden landscape beyond the streets outside, but to the buildings alongside it as well, to the harbour, and to citizens and visitors alike. Strange as it may sound, its off-white concrete walls and columns, its room-like staircases and lofty reading rooms, its cosy bars, and basement clubs and its regal theatre-cum-concert hall, all THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL 09.01.15 32 Buildings · Building Study: Stormen Concert Hall and Library, Bodø, Norway, DRDH Architects

suburban airport (it’s a 10-minute walk Orchestra is based there, and politically, The masterplan contest from the centre); the thickness of the it represents Norway’s commitment to presented a choice: to stone cladding on the towering Radisson the wider polar region, the next emerging Hotel; the width of the streets; the depth global market. regenerate or consolidate of the kerbs; roof pitches; signage; vistas; Much of the city today is the result of a teenage hotspots; the pros and cons of post-war rebuild: prefabricated lightweight the covered mall. The best restaurants. housing and stone-clad commercial painstakingly calibrated, all exquisitely The busiest pubs. Intimate moments. buildings. Most are unremarkable. Some constructed, exude a kind of intelligence. Collective moments. Everything that makes are downright terrible. But there are Poetry is useful here, so let’s reach: like a place. DRDH’s trick – call it architecture some exceptions. One, a civic ensemble Byron’s high mountains, Stormen, is a – has been to encode this knowledge into dating from the 1950s, deserves credit: feeling. And that feeling is Bodø itself. Stormen’s fabric. a cathedral, town hall and bandstand by Stormen is the feeling of a town. What of Bodø’s bigger story? It is the Gudolf Blakstad and Herman Munthe- There’s no magic at play in Bodø’s new capital of Nordland, a huge county in Kaas, that, like Stormen, was the result buildings. Stormen feels like a living thing Norway. When it was founded in 1816 as a of an architectural competition. Its entirely because of science; because trading post, just 55 people lived there (all shared qualities – concrete construction, of relentless, empirical study. DRDH’s men, the records show). By 1870 freestanding towers, and the dialogue they relationship with Bodø began in March fishing had taken off and its population have with the public park they face – would 2008 when the London-based studio won began to grow. In 1940, a German bombing be remembered by DRDH when it came a masterplan competition to locate a raid left most of the town in ruins and to submitting its masterplan. Notably too, new library and concert hall. Every detail two-thirds of its 6,000 residents homeless. much of the city was laid out on a grid, of Bodø’s built environment and how it Today, it plays host to Norway’s civil albeit one muted by its low-rise profile. is used was forensically analysed: the aviation authority and the University of DRDH founder Daniel Rosbottom colour, texture and dimensions of the Nordland, and has a population of 50,000. says the masterplan contest presented timber panels covering the Swedish kit Stormen is very much Bodø’s next chapter: a choice: to regenerate or consolidate. houses that line the streets around the the newly-formed Arctic Philharmonic Regeneration suggested an iconic statement of some kind on a plot on the far side of the harbour, where Bodø begins to fray. This was a popular approach among contestants swayed by the popular appeal of the landmark silhouette. Yet DRDH was rightly concerned that any gains would be compromised by the longer walks to and from the site – stormy weather is not uncommon in Bodø. Consolidation on the other hand – developing a defiantly urban plot at the city centre’s edge – appealed to the architect. DRDH divined an opportunity: to add to the grid, to enhance its presence, with two interdependent monumental structures addressing the harbour and town. Bodø’s grandees agreed, and in March 2009 launched competitions for each building on the proposed site. For Rosbottom it was a case of ‘double or quits’, so DRDH entered both contests – and won. 1. (previous spread) Concert hall The result is two buildings as with library in indicated by the architect’s masterplan. foreground Freestanding, distinct – and legibly so – 2. San Giorgio they are also clearly a deliberate pair: Maggiore, Early Morning, ‘living rooms’ for the whole of Bodø. Both Joseph Mallord buildings, for example, have columnar Turner, 1819 facades directed towards the sea. As 3. View of library Rosbottom explains, the forms of the from across Bodø’s harbour library and the concert hall are dynamic; 4. Main concert shifting and responding to the scale of hall foyer on the immediate context. The concert hall opening night especially transmits monumentality 5. The auditorium can seat up to and intimacy simultaneously, breaking 2 944 people down its bulk into a collective of smaller 3333

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elements clustered around the fly tower. Each building has inflected rooflines that rhyme together, like man-made mountains. However, the pairing equally recalls both a humble harbour-side shed and a temple. When viewed from across the harbour, suggests Rosbottom, it could be an Arctic remix of St Georgio Maggiore as depicted by Turner from across the Venetian lagoon, a painting that has been an inspiration since the outset of the project. And Stormen holds the light. In the winter sun, the prefabricated panel facades take on a pinkish hue with direct light revealing a subtle two-tone texture: polished at street level, brushed above head height. Internally the buildings have contrasting characters, despite sharing the same palette of materials, which complement and, on occasion, mimic the external expression. Each surface is made of pressed or bonded elements: ply, for example, or calcium sulphate panels. The Concert Hall has three auditoriums compactly placed east to west across the site, with a processional route, punctuated by corner bars and long viewing galleries, leading to the central main auditorium, which seats close to a thousand people. The library, conversely, is dominated by the main reading room: it is a cavernous 6 volume overlooking the harbour and apportioned by a thunderous timber staircase and capacious, tent-like roof. It does have intimate spaces: a corner art gallery at street level and a charming top- floor children’s library arranged around a courtyard. Yet the muscular reading room lingers in the mind. Rosbottom remembers watching a storm break one night, a little awestruck as sheet lightning lit up the room around him. That, in essence, is Stormen’s secret: it lets the outside in.

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1. Flytower Concert mode 2. Grid ENGINEER’S 3. Stage 4. Forestage grid and reflector VIEW 5. Ceiling 1 Reflectors 6. Movable rigging The 950-capacity main hall required 2 bridge a variable acoustic, accommodating 7. Follow spot gallery performances ranging from theatre 8. Hinged with a reverberation time (RT) of proscenium about 1 sec, through to symphonic 5 header works with an RT of at least 1.8sec. 9. Hinged 4 7 proscenium wall This required a hall 18m wide and 12 11 11 8 panel high, with 11,000m³ of volume. 6 13 10. Sliding side-wall The space is transformed in panels theatre mode by exposing the 11. Flown ceiling 13 panel flytower and deploying a unique 12. Hinged ceiling system of acoustic wall panels 13 13 panel covering half of the side and rear 10 9 13. Sliding walls, reducing the RT as required. absorbing wall panels 13 In orchestral mode, these slide into 14. Orchestra enclosures behind the timber linings. 3 pit with two Laboratory testing ensured that, orchestra lifts when parked, these provide defined and precise limited low-frequency absorption. 14 To prevent orchestral sound being lost into the flytower, the conventional compromise is a shell, aligned to the proscenium header about 10m from the stage. For Theatre mode a purpose-built orchestral hall, more volume is required. A unique transformation system was developed; the proscenium header 1 and sides fold back to continue the width and height of the auditorium 2 into the stage. Three ceiling panels are flown and hinged into place. A track system allows one person 11 to deploy 14m-high side panels, 5 changing the room to a proportion 4 7 with the required acoustic. 6 Ian Knowles, director, Arup 13 Acoustics; Patrick Haymann, project 8 architect, main hall, DRDH Architects 13 12 9 13 13

13 6. Enclosed staircase leading 3 from concert hall entrance foyer 7. Gallery space on library 14 ground floor 8. Ground floor corner bar in concert hall 9. The auditorium stage configured for an orchestral 9 performance The library is dominated by the main reading room: it is a cavernous volume overlooking the harbour and apportioned by a thunderous timber staircase and capacious, tent-like roof

THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL 09.01.15 38 Buildings · Building Study: Stormen Concert Hall and Library, Bodø, Norway, DRDH Architects

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1. Main hall 2. Small hall 3. Sinus Rhythmic Centre 4. Kammersal 5. Foyer 6. Artists’ area/ 5 8 rehearsal room 1 7. Office 7 8. Terrace 9. Bar 5 10. Workshop 6 11. Truck loading bay

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1. Adult library 2. Youth library 3. Children’s library 4. Community studio 3 7 5. Staff office 6. Storytelling room 7. Courtyard 2 1 8. Media library 9. Newspapers 10. Gallery 4 11. Café 10 1 12. Meeting room 13. Multifunction room 14. Activity room

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1. Precast concrete West f acade 1 coping WORKING 4 2. Double-skin precast concrete facade panel DETAIL 3 2 with 200mm EPS insulation 5 3. Single-ply roof The load-bearing, precast concrete 6 4. Profiled steel facade of the concert hall and library sheet 5. Fire insulation was fabricated in white cement with 6. Primary steel 7 9 a white aggregate. We sought frame a single material that would allow 8 7. Roller blind the buildings to read as a coherent 10 8. Perforated 11 acoustic ensemble while suggesting the plasterboard solidity, longevity and scale of more 12 9. Aluminium archaic masonry constructions. flashing to match We also needed a material that glazing 10. Triple-glazed, could form both solid walls and argon-filled slender, self-supporting fins. The aluminium fins sit in front of the curtain walling, curtain wall providing solar shade, and are system 11. Steel curtain restrained at the top by concrete wall carrier copings. Monolithic walls are formed frame mullion from 460mm-thick precast sandwich 12. Concrete column panels; horizontal spandrel panels at 13. Precast concrete fin, 300x600mm each floor anchor the facade back to 14. Raised access the structure, and are in-filled with floor with larger panels or full-height glazing. parquet finish At street level the walls are 15. Trench heater 16. Stainless steel polished, a treatment which fin bracket continues up the face of each 17. Single-skin tower and fin, while elsewhere, a 13 precast concrete brushed finish creates a soft sheen. facade panel with 200mm EPS Recessed joints add scale and insulation grain, while the ribbing of the fly 18. Concrete floor tower recalls the timber cladding of slab traditional Norwegian houses. The 19. External drain 20. Ground floor 14 client required us to meet SINTEF slab (Norwegian BRE) recommendations. 15 Our bespoke design, developed 16 17 with advice from Ramboll Facades, 18 includes double-sealed drained cavities at all panel junctions and at interfaces with the glazing and roof. Richard Marks, project architect, library; Ewan Stone, project architect, concert hall

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10. View to west facade with fly 20 tower above 11. (opposite) View 10 to west facade 43

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JBL.CO.U EA K H T RELATED BUILDINGS IN Buildings AJ BUILDINGS LIBRARY y Librar K .U TH O EAJBL.C 2009 DAVID GRANDORGE DAVID The Workshop Studio and Office, Nether Edge, Sheffield DRDH Architects 2011 DENNIS GILBERT Lyric Theatre, Belfast O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects 2012 NIC LEHOUX Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway Renzo Piano Building Workshop/ Narud Stokke Wiig Arkitekter